“Let’s call it a domestic textile,” says Dr. Michele Hardy when I, once again, stumble over just what to call this item we’re talking about. I have said “rug,” “carpet,” “covering,” and “piece” more times in the last ten minutes than I can remember saying in the previous six months but I think I can be forgiven for the confusion—this “domestic textile” could be all of the above.
Professor Michele Hardy with our subject for the day! This domestic textile had been purchased at an annual market in San Francisco and was added to the Nickle Gallery’s collection.
“I suspect strongly it is Kurdish, mainly because of the colour palette. It was probably made for use by people as opposed to something that was made to sell. These kinds of textiles—and there’s not that many of them in collections—they’re made with a particular function in mind. Whether it’s sleeping or sitting, it’s not something that was made as a gift for a mosque—which many of the big carpets were—or something that was made to be exchanged on the open market. So this is made for people, for themselves, which always makes it a little bit richer from a curator’s perspective.”
Dr. Hardy is the curator at the University of Calgary’s Nickle Gallery. Among her many tasks is to source artifacts for the gallery’s collection, items that will in turn become the foundation of shows and exhibitions as well as resources for students and academics. The subject of our conversation today is a large, tightly woven carpet, mainly in dark colours but with glorious squares of shaggy pile in vibrant shades. Although I’m not a weaver, even I can tell that whoever the artist was, she was accomplished and skillful with a refined sense of colour—and yes, according to Dr. Hardy, it was almost certainly “she.”
“To my eyes, it’s filled with love,” says Dr. Hardy, fondly.
All images courtesy Dr. Michele Hardy/Tara Klager
